


Curriculum Vitae

by Iseult_Variante



Category: Bones (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:18:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1628738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iseult_Variante/pseuds/Iseult_Variante
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four jobs Angela passed through, and the one where she stayed. (Set about mid-Season 3.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Curriculum Vitae

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to starfishchick and Ghost in the Peel for beta help! Any remaining issues are all on me. :)
> 
> Written for irishmizzy

 

 

_1\. Part-time barista at Starbucks_

The first two years that she was at art school in Chicago, Angela worked at the Starbucks at the corner of Jackson and Wabash. On the one hand: evil, rapidly growing corporate empire. On the other: it was _really_ close to school, and she got a pound of coffee a week, not counting what she drank on shift, or got for free when she came in to study. Also, Angela learned that she could make a killing in tips.

Given the location, the level of pretentiousness on any given day was pretty high, but within her first day at school she had developed an amused tolerance to that. She didn't mind seeing her friends and classmates at work, with the exception of the week after she broke up with Roxie--that was awkward.

***

Angela was on her way to Brennan's office with the sketch for the case they had caught that week when Jack called her over. She detoured past his workstation; he was staring intently into a petri dish with a brown film across the bottom, and he looked up as she approached.

"Hey Ange, smell this."

"Wow, no." She started to backpedal.

"What? Oh, no, no, I swear, it doesn't smell bad."

Angela raised an eyebrow, "To you?"

"It doesn't smell bad to any reasonable person, which, as we've discussed, doesn't include me." Jack rolled his eyes and grinned at her sheepishly, "I'm sorry about last time. C'mon, I need your expertise."

Warily, Angela leaned over the proffered petri dish. She stopped several inches away and waved her hand over the top, wafting the smell toward herself. "Huh. That smells like... an orange mocha frappucino? Wait... an orange mocha frappucino with soy milk?"

"Yes! Cam is going to owe me a free pass to skip the next benefit night!" Jack did a little fist pump with the hand not holding the petri dish.

Angela shook her head and smiled, "I matched the test results?"

"Well, I know you're going to." He leaned up and kissed her on the nose. "Your nose knows Starbucks."

Angela groaned at the pun. "It's so sad that you only love me for my special skills."

"But you have so _many_..."

"Stop it, I have to go give this to Booth and Brennan." Angela kissed him back, laughing, and swatted him with the folder she was carrying.

Jack sighed and hung his head. "Fine. But I'll see you later?"

"You know it." Angela smiled over her shoulder as she walked away.

_2\. Support staff at a sex and couples therapy clinic_

During second-to-last semester she spent at art school, Angela picked up some credits in art therapy by helping out four afternoons a week at a clinic. Everyone who knows her now is unsurprised that it was a clinic specializing in alternative methods of sex and couples therapy, but really, it was the only one with an opening at the time.

It was probably the job that she felt most ambivalent about, looking back. She was good at putting people at ease, and she was non-judgmental in a believable way. But it was hard not to feel too much about the problems people were having, not to take sides for or against them. Angela was a good listener, and a comforting presence, but it wasn't her nature to stay the step removed. She had to work for it.

***

When Angela arrived at the lab in the morning, she found that Zack was already downstairs, carefully spreading out the decayed rope that they had found knotted around victim in their latest case. Zack was carefully laying it out, section by section, arranging it as it had originally been on the body. It had looked tangled and chaotic when they brought the body in from the river, but from where Angela was standing, she could see a pattern to it.

Angela made her way over to the table. "Hey, Zack, I think I recognize the pattern in these ropes."

"Really? It's interesting--asymmetrical."

"Yeah, that was what caught my eye. I don't recognize the particular pattern, but I'm pretty sure it's some form of _kinbaku_."

"Oh, knowing the name of the technique will make it much faster to find the specific pattern online."

Angela winced. "Zack, it's a form of sexual bondage. Pretty, classy, bondage, but your web search might get a little, um..."

"Well, I assumed it was sexual, given the positioning of the body and the ropes." Zack smiled at her, "I would tell you that as a scientist, I won't get shocked, but you wouldn't believe me. I am getting _harder_ to shock, though."

"Oh, Zack." Angela reached over and mussed his hair. _They grow up so quickly!_ she laughed to herself. " _That_ , I believe."

_3\. Freelance photographer for National Geographic_

One of the more glamorous jobs that Angela had gotten after finishing school had been as part of the group sent to Venice by National Geographic to do an article on the MOSE project. The project was an effort to protect the city against rises in sea level, but it had been criticised by environmentalists for compromising the ecology of the seabed. One of her old professors was in charge of the assignment, and he had e-mailed, desperate for additional photographers. She hadn't had any plans for the next two months. Really, she would have cancelled her plans for a paid trip to Venice.

She had been tasked with photographing the city, to give an angle on the art and architecture that could be lost to the sea. When she brought her first days' proofs back to her old prof, he was delighted. "You've really emphasized the human angle, here. That's great, really tugs the heart-strings." Angela hadn't done it on purpose, but over the next several weeks she came to terms with the fact that her photos nearly all tended toward the human angle: children playing with the pigeons in Piazza San Marco, friends meeting on the Rialto Bridge, the drivers of the water busses on the Grand Canal.

***

When Jason Fletcher's parents arrived, Booth and Brennan were out taking a look at the crime scene that Zack and Hodgins had identified based on the particulates found on Jason's body. Cam seated them in a conference room, and came to find Angela.

"Ange, I don't want to ask you to do anything I wouldn't do myself, but... Jason Fletcher's parents are in conference room C. They seem happy for closure, more than anything." Cam sighed. "I think they thought he'd been dead for most of the time since he disappeared. His mother was wondering aloud what his life had been like for the last ten years."

"That poor woman. What do you want me to do?"

"When you went to with Booth to interview the landlord, did you take a look around the apartment?"

"Yeah, forensics took some photos, too."

"Would you mind showing them some of the photos? Telling them about the apartment?" Cam grimaced. "I don't want them to think about seeing the body, and Booth and Brennan won't be back for another hour at least."

Angela nodded and turned to her computer, opening the folder with the apartment photographs. "I can do that. I'll just need a minute to print some of these."

Cam smiled warmly and stepped out of the office. "You don't have to, but you're too good at this stuff for me not to ask. Thanks, Ange."

The printer whirred, and Angela picked up the first of the photos. They were straightforward forensic shots of the apartment, meant to record and catalogue, but this one had a good angle on the corner that Jason had set up for his music, with his cello leaning up against his chair, and another two chairs set out for a trio. They must have played regularly, for him to have left the chairs set out like that. Angela put the photo with the others into a new file folder, put her sketch of Jason on top, and left her office for conference room C.

_4\. Projectionist and co-programmer at The Landmark Cinema_

One of the last jobs Angela had before coming to the Jeffersonian, and one of her first in DC, was as at a little repertory cinema called the Landmark, on 11th street. The hours were strange, and the projection work was rote and mostly solitary, but it suited her at the time. She could people-watch: either the ones on screen, or the ones in the audience.

Programming was chosen by a monthly committee of any interested employees, which was pretty cool. It meant some very eclectic line-ups, though. One month was entirely either Christopher Guest or Alfred Hitchcock, and she woke up one afternoon from a strange dream of a dog show gone horribly, yet hilariously, wrong.

***

Booth was pacing back-and-forth, back-and-forth along the mezzanine overlooking the forensics platform, having been kicked out of the way while everyone else worked. It had been a rough couple weeks, with two unconnected cases each running into one dead-end after another, most recently when both of the suspects they had found apparently had air-tight alibis. Neither Lisa Wilson nor David Tanaka were any closer to being laid to rest. Angela had done all she could for now, and so she went to see if there was anything that Booth needed. _Other_ than the chance to strangle someone with an advanced degree.

Angela approached with caution. "Hi."

Booth looked up from the floor and stopped. "You got something?"

"Sorry, nothing yet," she shook her head apologetically, "but I wondered if it would help you to talk it out? Brennan's busy, but maybe explaining one of the cases to me would help?"

Booth let out a disappointed sigh, but he nodded, leaning his forearms over the railing and watching the scientists work. "You know, I've been doing this long enough to know that sometimes we don't get them. But neither of these feel like one of those." He stood up, and waved her into the conference room where the files for David Tanaka had been spread out. They worked their way around the table as Booth talked through the investigation.

"... but Tanaka's wife was at a transit commission meeting that night." Booth concluded.

"Huh."

"What?"

"No, it's too... way too cliched."

"Seriously, what?"

"... I thought it was Lisa Wilson who was found with traces of jetfuel on her clothes?"

"Ye-es."

"And David usually used the Tanaka's one car?"

"Right. What-"

"Hold that thought. Come on."

They ducked out of the conference room, and headed for Angela's office. As she opened the transit authority website, she flipped through the files stacked next to her computer. "OK, here's the file on Lisa Wilson. Her sister lives in Gaithersburg, and works on Capitol Hill. I'm guessing that she takes the red line from Shady Grove." Angela highlighted the relevant portion of the metro map.

"OK?"

"The Tanakas lived in Rockville, and Valerie Tanaka worked as an engineer at the FAA. Her commute would have looked like this," Angela highlighted from Rockville station down the red line and then along the blue line to L'Enfant Plaza.

"It seems crazy, but maybe Deb Wilson and Valerie Tanaka were strangers on a train."

Booth stared intently at the highlighted map, "You're right, it's crazy."

Angela threw her hands up in the air, "I know-

"But it feels right. They both think they're pulling one over on us. _That's_ what's been driving me crazy, they have _the same attitude_."

"Booth," They both turned around to find Brennan waiting at the door to the office. "I think we found something."

"So did we, Bones, so did we." Booth smiled at Angela for a second. "Wait, what do you mean, you _think_ you found something?"

"Well, you know how you say there are no coincidences in murder investigations?"

"And you usually agree with me that the chances are statistically ridiculous, yeah."

"Well, we were looking at the hair that we found on David Tanaka, and it-"

"Oh, let me guess, it's related to Lisa Wilson?"

"Well, the shared alleles in the hair suggest--yes, wait how did you know that?"

"Angela figured it out! Hitchcock, Bones, Hitchcock--bye, Ange, thanks--this is going to be a fun interrogation..."

Angela smiled after them as they headed out the door.

_5\. Forensic reconstruction specialist at the Jeffersonian Institute_

Angela had stayed late at the lab to finish off some paperwork for the federal attorney's office. She closed the file, grabbed her coat, and headed out. It was quiet, and she paused on the mezzanine, looking out over the lab. She nearly jumped out of her skin when Brennan came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Oh my god, I thought I was the last one here!" She put a hand to her chest and took a deep breath, laughing at herself.

"Sorry!" Brennan bit her lip, chagrined. "I thought you would have heard me."

"It's OK. You heading home?"

"Yeah. What are you doing, standing out here?"

"Just thinking. You know how many jobs I had before I came here?"

"No? Quite a few, though. I remember you said that this was the longest you'd had a job, and that was a couple years ago."

"Yeah. Now it's longer than I worked at all my other dozen jobs put together."

"Um, wow?"

Angela laughed, "It's OK, sweetie, I'm not going to run out on you."

"I didn't think you were." Brennan smiled. "You seem happy."

"I am. I'm comfortable, but not too comfortable, you know? It's cheesy, but lately I feel like I've finally gotten to where I'm supposed to be." Angela rolled her eyes. "Maybe I'm slowing down."

"Well, you _are_ getting married." Brennan teased.

"It's true. Happy and married, god."

"Are you freaking out?"

"Just a little." Angela wrinkled her nose. "Not much, though. That's the best part, I'm not freaking out much at all." She grinned, and hugged Brennan. "Thanks for listening, sweetie."

Brennan shook her head, bemused, and hugged back. "You're welcome."

 


End file.
